Let's Read: Neuropath (Bakker, 2009)

Neuropath (Bakker 2009) is a dramatic demonstration of the eliminative materialism worldview of the author R. Scott Bakker. It's very bloody and rapey, but it's probably necessary to get the radical implications of eliminative materialism across.

If you want to read the novel but are short on time, I recommend that you read the afterword first, where the author overviews what's real and what's not-yet-real (hint: it's too real for comfort). Then read the last chapter, where Neil lectured on and on about his eliminative materialism Argument, accompanied by gripping manipulations on the protagonist's and his ex-wife's brains.

Word list

Person words:

• Tom Bible/Thomas/Goodbook: protagonist, cognitive psychologist. 
• Neil Cassidy/Ocean Voice: neuroscientist, friend of Tom, used to be employed by the NSA, but has gone rogue. Hunted by the FBI throughout the story. Seems to be born with a psychopathic personality.
• Nora: ex-wife of Tom. Neil used to fuck Nora, and that made Tom feel hurt.
• Samantha (Sam) Logan: FBI agent, second protagonist. Very understanding to Tom, kind of a romantic partner to Tom as the story went on. Also an agent of FBI.
• Shelly Atta: FBI agent. Not nice.
• Cynthia Powski "Cream": a porn starlet from Escondido, California. Killed by Neil.
• Theodore Gyges/the Chiropractor: captured by Neil for a demo. His alter-ego is the Chiropractor, a serial murderer who removes the spines from the victims.
  

Other words:

• Low-field fMRI: fMRI using magnetic fields that are "low", that is, does not need massive magnets with cooling. Those are small, cheap, and easy to hide. Used by the government to do mindreading, as an extremely advanced form of surveillance cameras.
• Disney world: a phrase used by Neil to refer to the commonsense reality model that normal people construct in their heads. The "Disney world" model is destroyed by a full understanding of neuroscience.
• Moscow: a city destroyed by climate change.
• The Argument: neuroscience shows that eliminative materialism is true, and folk psychology is wrong. Usual morality, based on folk psychology, is also wrong. 
• End-user illusion: A metaphor for consciousness. The phrase came from The User Illusion (Nørretranders, 1991), or perhaps Consciousness Explained (Dennett, 1991)
• The semantic apocalypse: Meaning is a brain phenomenon, and with neurotechnology for changing brains, multiple species of humans would appear, such that they are mutually incomprehensible. Their actions would seem meaningless to each other -- a meaning-apocalypse.
• Derealization: effect of bellyfeeling the end-user illusion theory of consciousness. After bellyfeeling it, you would realize that you are in a waking dream. A dream yoked to reality through the sense organs, but still a dream. 
• Depersonalization: effect of bellyfeeling the Argument. You realize that there is no "self" or "free will" or just about all the folk psychological concepts. Your self is only a useful model constructed by the brain.

Let's Read: The conspiracy against the human race

The conspiracy against the human race (Ligotti 2010) is a collection of essays that explore all corners of pessimistic thinking. Ligotti, usually a horror fiction writer, has a habit to ramble and use difficult sentences when he really could have used something easier to digest. Because of that, I did not finish the whole book, but only the first half. I believe little value is lost by my skipping.

The Amazon description states:

Drawing on philosophy, literature, neuroscience, and other fields of study, Ligotti takes the penetrating lens of his imagination and turns it on his audience, causing them to grapple with the brutal reality that they are living a meaningless nightmare, and anyone who feels otherwise is simply acting out an optimistic fallacy.

The Nightmare of Being

Psychogenesis

Humans are unique in being self-conscious, and knowing that life is full of suffering, they would die. This makes them awake and aware of the nightmare of existence.

Ante-Mortem

Most people, and most philosophers in particular, thinks that "being alive is alright". They are the optimists. The pessimists think the opposite: "being alive is bad, and it's best to never have been born".

"What should we say about being alive?" Overwhelmingly, people have said, "Being alive is all right." More thoughtful persons have added, "Especially when you consider the alternative,"

Pessimists are unpopular, but still they have a cult following. Some readers read pessimists' work as a kind of therapy, to keep themselves from going mad from sadness.

there exist readers who treasure philosophical and literary works of a pessimistic, nihilistic, or defeatist nature as indispensable to their existence.